appliances: November 2008 Archives

A blow by blow account from Dan Johnson of West Hartford attempting to have Sears repair his broken washing machine:

"We have a Sears HE front load washing machine that died late last month. It was 2 years old in Oct. We called Sears Home Repair number which is on the instruction manual 1-800-4-MY-Home or 1-800-469-4663 and scheduled the repair... Next Tuesday, Nov 25th, between 8-12, they will show with a totally different part for their 6th service call to get the machine working. (this is the short version.)

According to the Consumerist.com this photo was taken by a customer in the new Best Buy store in Charlotte, North Carolina, where the were pushing their $250 in-home television calibration service by pretending the television on the right was calibrated and the one on the left was not. For the full complaint go to this link.

I sent the complain to Best Buy yesterday morning. No response yet. So here is the start of the complaint from "Robert." If you see any funny business at a store, take a photo and send it to me and we can have some fun with it.

The last time I caught them playing games with consumers was when they had two internet sites that ripped off many people. See my March 7, 2007 column.

"While helping my father look for an HDTV at the newest Best Buy in Charlotte, NC this Sunday, I came across their demo display of their color calibration service.

"On the left side of the demo, they had a HDTV tuned to ESPN, and on the right, there was the exact same model of TV presumably tuned to the same station, but with a far superior picture.

"The difference between the two was remarkable; the left one was grainy and blurry while the right one looked sharp and detailed. Thinking that something was not right, I took a further look at the demo and realized that the inferior tv on the left was turned to plain old ESPN, and the superior tv on the right was tuned to ESPN HD.

" What's even worse is they had a box for their Black Tie TV Protection Plan strategically placed so that when looking at the display from most angles, it covered up the ESPN logo on the left tv as to disguise the fact that it was not an HD channel."

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